Ristoril - Slashdot User

Submission + - Scientists and Engineers Honored by President

Submitted by Ristoril on Tuesday December 23, 2008 @10:29AM

Ristoril writes: Sixty-seven of America's most promising scientists and engineers were invited to the White House last Friday to hob-nob with the President and other top US officials. From the wiki, The Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers is an award program that honors and supports "the extraordinary achievements of young professionals at the outset of their independent research careers in the fields of science and technology." The official press release is here. Do you think they discussed the the probability of the recent perfect showcase bid?

Comment The sad state of science education (Score 1) 713

by Ristoril on Friday December 19, 2008 @02:49PM (#26175519) Attached to: Trick or Treatment

What this book and the popularity of these alternative approaches to health and healing show is that people don't believe the science education they were given.

Most people are familiar - at least vaguely - with the Scientific Method. They were introduced to it in middle school or earlier.

While it's fun to laugh at the people that believe in this stuff and meet an early grave or a debilitating chronic condition because of their belief in this hocus-pocus, I believe we'd be better served (and more moral) if we were to focus on the big questions:

Why don't people believe in science? Why don't they know or keep the Scientific Method close to their hearts? What could we be doing better to make sure that quackery like this passes away naturally as it would in any system wherein most people subscribed to the SM?

We all know this stuff doesn't work (beyond the power of the placebo), but we're obviously in the minority. As Stephen Colbert might opine, this stuff is succeeding in the market, so it must be true.

If we want to save people from doom, we should look at improving either the quality or the retention of our science education.

China Launches Antitrust Probe Vs. Microsoft 295

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday June 18, 2008 @11:21AM from the get-on-the-bus dept.

snydeq writes "China has launched an investigation into whether Microsoft unfairly dominates its software market, according to a state media report. A working committee of China's State Intellectual Property Office is investigating whether Microsoft engaged in discriminatory pricing and will also look at Microsoft's practice of bundling other software programs within its Windows operating system, according to the report. The probe is part of a greater sweep of operating systems and other software developed by multinational companies that cost much more in China than in the U.S. 'On the one hand, global software firms, taking advantage of their monopoly position, set unreasonably high prices for genuine software while on the other hand, they criticise Chinese for poor copyright awareness. This is abnormal,' a source said."

Wikileaks Gets Hold of Counterinsurgency Manual 999

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday June 18, 2008 @08:06AM from the what-we-learned-in-central-america dept.

HeavensBlade23 writes in to let us know that Wikileaks has published a US Special Forces counterinsurgency manual, titled Foreign Internal Defense Tactics Techniques and Procedures for Special Forces (1994, 2004). "The document, which has been verified, is official US Special Forces doctrine. It directly advocates training paramilitaries, pervasive surveillance, censorship, press control and restrictions on labor unions & political parties. It directly advocates warrantless searches, detainment without charge and the suspension of habeas corpus. It directly advocates bribery, employing terrorists, false flag operations and concealing human rights abuses from journalists. And it directly advocates the extensive use of 'psychological operations' (propaganda) to make these and other 'population & resource control' measures more palatable."

Replacement For Aging Doppler Radar Being Tested 105

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday June 18, 2008 @05:12AM from the sounds-like-a-freight-train dept.

longacre writes "Due to its limited range and slow scan times, the backbone of weather prediction in the US since the early 1990s, the NEXRAD radar system, is deeply flawed in the eyes of meteorologists. A new system being tested by researchers at the NOAA and four universities called the Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) network aims to fill the holes left by NEXRAD, using radar nodes piggybacked onto existing infrastructure, such as rooftops and cell towers. From the article: 'Based on faster and more comprehensive data collection, [Distributed Collaborative Adaptive Sensing] processing can refocus the CASA radars on a particularly interesting part of a storm (like an area that looks like it might develop a tornado) without losing track of an entire storm cell. "The system is continuously diagnosing the atmosphere and reallocating resources using wireless Internet as a backbone," says [the CASA team director].' Testing has begun in Oklahoma, Houston, and Puerto Rico, and initial installations could begin in 5 years."

All Your Coffee Are Belong To Us 354

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday June 18, 2008 @02:19AM from the pouring-over-it dept.

Wolf nipple chips writes "Craig Wright discovered that the Jura F90 Coffee maker, with its honest-to-God Jura Internet Connection Kit, can be taken over by a remote attacker, who can cause the coffee to be weaker or stronger; change the amount of water per cup; or cause the machine to require service (call this one a DDoC). 'Best yet, the software allows a remote attacker to gain access to the Windows XP system it is running on at the level of the user.' An Internet-enabled, remote-controlled coffee-machine and XP backdoor — what more could a hacker ask for?"

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